What is the correct way to connect two tf trees?

asked 2013-03-19 15:12:25 -0500

Asomerville
2743 ●74 ●99 ●133 http://www.resquared.com/

I have a setup in which two separate tf trees are published, and I'd like to define one with regard to the other, but not from the base link/root node.

For instance two trees one with a tf_prefix, one without such that you might see:

/baseLink
  /link0
     /linkA0
     /linkB0

and

/ghost/baseLink
   /ghost/link0
      /ghost/linkA0
      /ghost/linkB0

And I want to define /ghost/linkB0 as having an identity transformation from /linkB0. However, since tf is set up with child and parent relationships as a tree and not as a free network, the correct way to do this is unclear.

The only way I can think to do it would be to rebuild the KDL::Tree that the sub-ordinate tree's RobotStatePublisher uses to originate at the desired link, but this would be non-trivial, and not offer a way to easily select a different link at will without doing the same thing for each desired combination.

Is there a better way to do this? Is it even possible given the current architecture?

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answered 2013-03-19 15:33:31 -0500

tfoote

58457 ●128 ●550 ●526 http://www.ros.org/

Your instincts are correct you can simply add a transform from "/baseLink" to "/ghost/baseLink". The graph structure is independent of the names of the frames.

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Problem is that I want to go from /linkA0 to /ghost/linkA0 which cause /ghost/linkA0 to have two parents and fail. I'm working on a work-around where I publish the transfrom from /ghost/linkB0 to /ghost/baseLink as the transform from /linkB0 to /ghost/baseLink to get the same effect.

Asomerville ( 2013-03-19 16:01:06 -0500 )edit

1

Just publish the link the other direction so it's a child, not a parent. You cannot bridge in the middle of a tree.

tfoote ( 2013-05-27 09:23:06 -0500 )edit

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answered 2013-03-20 01:59:40 -0500

Claudio

859 ●29 ●40 ●50 http://www.fusioncored...

If I got what you want correctly: get the tf from the /base_link to /linkB0 and the tf from /ghost/base_link to /ghost/linkB0 and resolve to have the inbetween tf match an identity.

Either you make the nodes you want to manage the trees' roots or you resolve the inverse kinematics.

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This is pretty much the work-around I cam up with as well, but it's still a bit off as if certain transforms are updated more frequently than others, there will be more error than if the chain flowed from /linkB0 to /ghost/linkB0

Asomerville ( 2013-03-20 04:57:42 -0500 )edit

What time difference are you seeing? At 50Hz on a wifi I sometimes see delays of half a second and tf view_frames requires multiple runs before drawing the correct trees. So it may well be normal that you have delays sometimes.

Claudio ( 2013-03-20 06:47:00 -0500 )edit

It's not a measured one difference but inferred. If I publish the transform from /linkB0 to /ghost/baseLink and the joint between /ghost/linkB0 and /ghost/link0 changes before the next update to from /linkB0 to /ghost/baseLink, all transforms in the /ghost/ tree will be incorrect.

Asomerville ( 2013-03-20 09:45:04 -0500 )edit

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answered 2013-03-20 02:13:16 -0500

dornhege

31395 ●134 ●284 ●498

You could add a transform /base_link -> /ghost/base_link or a common /world parent for both. The problem is that you'll need to compute that based on the trees.

It's the same way that SLAM algorithms provide /map -> /base_link by computing /map -> /odom.

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What is the correct way to connect two tf trees?

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